The Grants Experiment - Report #2

February 2025 Report — Six Months In

From:
Dobes
(Pat Dobie)

Here at

Gifted Underachievers

, we’re six months into a one-year experiment with the hypothesis that we can create an income stream from grants. I’m now calling this the infamous Grant Experiment. Until just recently, I was seeing it as a trial through the fires of self-scrutiny, procrastination, and imposter syndrome. (The latter is not something I usually suffer from, BTW--I figure my guess is as good as anyone else's as to what life is all about. But with the Grants Experiment I have discovered a full, flowering garden of self-doubt behind the outhouse of my conscious mind.)

Good news! Writing this post has helped me view it as a necessary—nay, a required—phase in my evolution as a human being.

Screech--Back Up!!!

If you're unfamiliar with the Gifted Underachievers’ Grant Experiment, here's some background information:

a written update from October 2024 (two months in)

And a few verbal updates in the form of podcast segments--in chronological order:

Resume Speed - Current Metrics

First, the current metrics.

Grants received ever: 0

Creative residencies received ever: 1 (in 2016—the amazing Mineral School Arts Residency in Mineral, WA)

Grant and residency applications subbed since the experiment started (August 2024): 3 - BC Arts Council, Access Copyright, Bloedel Conservatory

Grant / residency / prize apps considered but not done (Pat): 12 - Kulcher Mills, TWUC Mentorship grant, High-Five, Masters Review, Hypatia in the Woods, Tin House Summer Residency, Canada Council, Awesome Foundation, Stiwdio Maelor, Mid-Career Writers Grant, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Cai Emmons Fiction Award

Context viz the Above Metrics:

The context must be taken into account. It included:

failure to qualify in my category for the Canada Council grant—I didn’t qualify to apply in the original category I thought I was in—and a subsequent period of demoralization and procrastination
missing the deadline for one grant app by 15 minutes and a subsequent period of demoralization and self-doubt
research on non-government opportunities revealing (variously) some potential Mormon interference in grant administration, application fees that didn’t align with the prize amounts — that is, the grant or contest came across as a money-making opportunity from the sponsoring organization rather than a legit support to writers, and (this was by far the most common) my own ineligibility or unsuitability for the opportunity
a catastrophic brain bleed (not me, my 94-yo mother), which seriously affected my time and energy to focus on anything but deadlines for paid work
the US election results, which led me to remove US residencies / grants from my list and focus more on Canadian and international opportunities

Tools

The short version is, my tools changed. Not radically. I still use an Excel spreadsheet and a system of folders. My organization of both has changed to better suit the reality of writing and submitting the three grant / residency apps I actually completed.

New organization of folders:

My Beloved Spreadsheet, now a Charnel House of Broken Dreams:

Here’s a shot of my experimental “log” up to Oct. 14/24:

Here’s the log between Oct. 14/24 and today:

Fruitful actions (that yielded new and relevant information)

contacting a previous grant winner to ask about their project
reading parts of Gigi Rosenberg's The Artist's Guide to Grant Writing
watching informational seminars given by writing associations and grant-awarding bodies (e.g., The Writers Union of Canada)
asking my brother Mike and my friend Kate for help with writing an 'inquiry question' for a research grant application and for figuring out how the research I’m doing for my novel is necessary for the writing of the novel
asking for feedback on that same draft grant application as I wrote and rewrote it

The Takeaways - Six Months In

So far, the grant experiment has brought me a number of useful realizations:

that it's important to read not just the grant application instructions, but also the organization's values, mission, mandate--whatever they say about themselves--and then write your project description to reflect your understanding of their purpose and values and show how it relates to your project

that researching past winners and locating descriptions of past projects online (gathering context) arms you with successful examples of how to describe the project you're asking the organization to fund

that asking for help in understanding and curating the list of grants and residencies you apply for will save you hours of time and effort
that nothing beats another set of eyes and some feedback on your draft applications, which means giving your helpers enough time to read it

that if you are a novice to the world of grants, you'll need a long runway--that is, DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. Plan ahead and break each application down into small steps. Avoiding and procrastinating in a grant experiment has zero benefits and many costs, the main costs being missing deadlines and creating an unnecessary emergency viz the people you’re asking for help.
that writers and other people are extremely kind--I already knew this, but have really enjoyed rediscovering in my time of need
that the amount of stuff I've developed for grant applications is a retrospective of my writing life, summarized in bios of varying lengths and CVs with slightly different slants

that the need to articulate projects via a written description of around 1000 words (depending on the application) can deepen and enrich the scope of the project far beyond what I expected

that I'll be continuing this experiment after the 1-year mark, partly to circle back to grants whose deadlines I missed and partly because many writers/artists have talked and written about how many tries it can take to be awarded a particular grant--it is not a 'one and done' experience
speaking of deadlines I missed, my takeaway is that missing a deadline is not the end of the world, it’s part of the experience for novice grant writers. I was on a writing session hosted by the wonderful London Writers Salon yesterday, and one of the participants, a writer named Portia Jackson Preston (founder of Empowered to Exhale, which looks very cool), introduced the term “gentle retrospective planning.” In the context of this experiment, that means when I miss a deadline, I can just keep what I wrote on file and put the opportunity on my list for next year.

If you’ve gotten this far in my update, I salute you!

What do you think? Any words of wisdom? Would you like to join this experiment? Please do! Just leave a comment or send me an email to giftedunderachievers@substack.com